Haha, well the time sure has been moving fast, hasn’t it? Well I’m here to let you know that it’s time to start relaxing for the holidays and get comfy from wherever you are.
Let’s start with a some truly on-fire neo-classical by one of my very favorite living composers.
So-often overlooked, yet always well over the bar, Karl Jenkins has served the classical music community with masterpieces for decades, producing some of the best works of this era between his personal compositions and his vocalist group Adiemus.
He recently celebrated his 75th birthday with an excellent concert, but this music isn’t from that. This is just a snippet from one of his numerous experimental albums in which he takes cultural musical traditions from one country or setting, and implants it with his unique style of composition.
Do listen to some of his stuff after this. He’s one of the best composers still living (easily in the top 3), and yet almost no one outside of the classical niche know who he is.
Now with that out of the way. Let’s talk about the big, big stuff going on. This is gonna be a doozie of an update so get your mitts on your beverage of choice.
Short Story: Kingsday Gifts
The minions are going about their typical holiday routine, but Stereotypical Minion Minion has a little something extra planned. When he’s not pulling lever evilly and groveling at his master’s feet, he’s actually doing some pretty considerate stuff.
I mean, that’s not to say that groveling at someone’s feet isn’t considerate, but it’s usually just considerate of the person you’re groveling to. I don’t claim to know the specifics about that.
You can read this heart-warming, inexplicably Tuna-scented tale by clicking here. Enjoy~
An Experiment:
I now have a page on Ko-fi (basically a cuter version of Patreon that doesn’t force people to subscribe) as a sort of “feeler” for anyone that likes my serial fiction enough for me to keep doing it on the regular.
The premise is simple. If you donate $4 for a polygonal shape, that will lessen the load on me and keep my nose to the epic-writing grindstone. If you do donate, you’ll be put in the special thanks of my next book, among other niceties.
Now you may look at me, do that little scoff/headturn thing, and say: “Kell, what the hell. You already charge for your ebooks!”
Why yes, I do, and that gives you an ebook like any other author would. It’s quite fair and this is entirely optional. I want to make a living off of this and do it full time, after all!
I usually have less than two hours to write daily, and I feel like I do pretty well for it all things considered, but being able to step away from the work and do writing full time would increase those two hours to something resembling 8 or even 10 hours a day. I could put out releases monthly (or maybe even faster) like one of those crazy-person authors!
This idea sprung up in my mind to see if I could look into alternative ways to support what I do; there’s more than one path to anything, after all, and figured I could only learn if I gave it a shot. After all, why should I continuously do this when I could be focusing on something that would bring in the buckaroos? If this did bring in the buckaroos, then it would be more justified in my increasingly-tight and demanding deadline schedule. Sorry, I like giving fiction away for free, but reality throws bricks at you just as much I’m afraid and paying the bills sometimes takes priority.
That said, this “fund” is for people appreciating all the stuff I do for arts sake and just give away, particularly the short stories and serials (more on that soon).
So hark thee here: If you’re interested in buying Polygonal Shape Enthusiast Minion a Polygonal Shape, please consider supporting him (and in effect supporting me, so I don’t have to keep running away from the keyboard to find shapes for him.)
For the mean time the only things I have going on with the ko-fi are the option to commission me and the Polygonal Shape Minion origin stories going on. The more Polygonal Shapes donated, the more stories appear starring our favorite… uh, little guy… thing… dude. You’ll also be noted in the credits as a supporter for the next book I publish- so by all means IMMORTALIZE YOURSELF IN THE ANNALS OF HISTORY!
Please take a peek, and thanks in advance if you do choose to donate a shape for him/me:
Now then, on the topic of serial fiction:
The BIG news of the month: The Scar makes its return
Now you can’t say I’ve ever really given up, alright? :^)
After three long years after the closing of the StoryShift app, Walking the Scar is making a return, and this time we’re dashing straight to the finish line.
It was uploaded piece by piece for a good long time, and was more than half way through completion before being unfortunately nipped in the face by the demise of the app’s readerbase.
Currently numbering at 59,000 words, The Scar will be the culmination of that experiment and will be posted first on royalroad.com before it’s official release as a novel on amazon.
This is the shiny, edited, version with lots of extra bells and whistles. The war crimes contained in these pages will be so pretty you’ll almost want them to happen to you instead!
Just kidding.
For those of you not in the loop, this is basically The Courts Divided’s unofficial book 1.5, which follows Hoss’Rayull’s exploits back on the Midland line fighting the Ulterian forces of the East. It has a lot of really cool tie-ins with certain pieces of the story from the other book, so if you keep a sharp eye out you might be able to spot a few comparisons.
There’s gonna be a lot of spilled milk in this one, so be ready for a little more violence and sappy tragedy than my usual. There’s just too many characters: I can’t possibly be bothered to get them all out alive!
You’ll be able to read the first chapter by clicking here, with more chapters to come out every Saturday!
Another big thing: Join the discord server!
We have a discord server now for chatting about the books, games, music; whatever really.
If you’re into those new-fangled types of communities, peek your head in and join the conversation over at https://discord.gg/VmMdUA3.
I’ll probably run contests on the regular and post free stuff every now and again. It’d be a cool place to be for all of that.
2019: in retrospective
Well it’s about that time.
2019 was quite the exceptional year, wasn’t it? We got a lot done! Some things were planned and didn’t come through, other things were unplanned but mystically appeared, and still others were planned and did come through, just as planned!
Let’s take a look at what we knocked out this time:
Books Published:
Nocturna League #6: The Mermaid’s Tear
Nocturna League #7: The Navigator’s Throne
Nocturna League #8: The Lurking Future
Nocturna League #9: The Mask of The Visionary
Nocturna League #10: The Deafening Silence
Substation 7 Book 1: Condemnation
Substation 7 Book 2: Liberation
And a lot of short stories!
Words published: app. 300,000
Words written: app. 280,000
I’d say that’s a reasonably solid look for us this year, especially considering how shot-down I was for a large chunk of the time due to work and the like. I expect next year will be even MORE of a challenge! After all, I’m planning for almost twice as many releases as from this year!
We have little time to waste, (unless it’s spent watching birds or eating something tasty) so know that we must continuously fight forward to bring fiction into reality and change the world.
I’ll talk to you all again in January. Happy Holidays!
All the best,
Kell Inkston
Coffee... WRITING!... COFFEE!! 